The role NGOs played in the August 2022 elections according to Chebukati

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) released their post-election evaluation report as IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati, Commissioners Boya Molu and Abdi Guliye came to the end of their non-renewable six-year contract on the 17^th January 2023. In their 184-page report, they detailed how the commission partnered with different CSOs and CBOs.

There were three types of partners that IEBC engaged with. IEBC says that they partnered with Development Partners, State Actors and Non-state actors. Non-state actors, where CSOs and NGOs fall, partnered with IEBC in electoral security, communication information and technology, donor funding and organizing stakeholder forums.

Donor groups gave IEBC financial help and technical support. “In addition to funding from the National Treasury, the election technical assistance providers, including donor groups, supported Commission activities financially, technically, and operationally to deliver on its mandate,” says IEBC in its report.

Last year IEBC were more intentional about inclusion and equality for all. They, therefore, engaged with Special Interest Groups (SIGs). These are some of the SIGs that IEBC worked with Youth Coordinating Committee (YCC), Women Coordinating Committee (WCC) and Disability Inclusion Coordinating Committee (DICC).

Chebukati also said that they held a lot of stakeholder forums in the country. These forums, in partnership with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), held these forums at the national, county, constituency and ward levels.

“The participants for these forums were drawn from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), Faith Based Organizations (FBOs), Disabled Persons Organizations (DPOs), Youth, Women, Election observers, Universities and Colleges Students associations, and various government agencies,” says IEBC.

The report says that the total expenditure of the general elections was Ksh 34,541,701,548 but the commission did not utilize Ksh 5,889,053,665 because they didn’t meet their target of 26.8 million voters and 53,300 polling stations. Instead, they only registered 22.12 million voters representing 82% of the target. They only used 46,229 polling stations representing 86.2% of the target.